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User blog:Lily Ford/How Pacific Rim: Uprising Undermines Stacker Pentecost's Story
In the Audio Commentary for Pacific Rim (which is available on both the standard and Blu-Ray DVD releases), the scene where Mako Mori reveals Gipsy Danger’s secret weapon, the Chain Sword, and exacts her vengeance on Otachi in the name of her family, director Guillermo del Toro clarifies her battle cry, “For my family!” Out of all the things motivating the characters in Pacific Rim (like survival), protecting family – be it found or biological – and the loss of family is the driving force behind the story. When the film establishes that everything could very well come to an end and in the favor of the Kaiju, and politicians attempt to use cheap alternatives, the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. keep fighting, in apparent vain, because their families are one of their strongest motivators. Their families are something they’re desperate to protect. This lends to del Toro's idea of "the world saving the world" instead of one particular state or country. Family is universal, no matter how it's formed, or what language they speak. So, at the center of that fight – their resistance – isn’t a man who is any different than the people he leads, but is otherwise defined within the narrative as an example of an individual who keeps fighting for family despite the losses in his life. And that man is Stacker Pentecost. The Breakdown Why Stacker and Mako Matter as the heart of Pacific Rim By the time the events of Pacific Rim begins, Stacker Pentecost has pretty much lost almost everyone close to him: His father Obadel, his mother (who just disappears), his sister Luna, and his co-pilot Tamsin Sevier, who dies gradually from cancer caused by radiation exposure from poor shielding in Coyote Tango. In the same breath, Pentecost is terminally-ill himself and will eventually die from his own cancer, especially if he attempts to pilot another Jaeger. But, among all of his losses, he saved a little girl who had only recently lost her own family the day he was forced to fight a Kaiju on his own following the collapse of his co-pilot. Her name was Mako Mori. With no immediate family to look after her, Stacker Pentecost decided to adopt her, almost four weeks after he rescues her from Onibaba. Pacific Rim’s external media and the film itself go through great pains to demonstrate just how much the two mean to each other as a found family, as the only survivors of their respective families. Mako knows he's dying, it’s not a secret that’s kept from her. The two experience Tamsin's death together, the three of them make a core family structure. Stacker is practically teaching her everything he’s learned from his overall life, and wants to see her succeed within the PPDC. He is not only her mentor, passing on his knowledge before death, he is her second father. Their entire conflict within the film is that he’s concerned that she hasn’t learned to reign in her emotions in relation to her want for revenge, and she demonstrates to him twice that she isn’t initially. It’s not that he doesn’t trust her, or doesn’t want her to become a pilot. He’s not an overbearing father, and Mako knows the reasoning behind his actions when he says no to her initially. Even she objects to his decisions, she defends him when Raleigh Becket makes the assumption that Stacker is being unfair to her. He eventually obliges her request, wanting to be proven wrong, and subsequently grounds her after the training accident, falling back on the belief that it was still too soon for her pilot. As an outsider, Raleigh simply sees it as Stacker being an overbearing or overprotective father figure, trying to control her, or “hold her back” from what he was able to see in her memories. But an overprotective father wouldn’t allow his daughter to pilot a Jaeger, not once, but twice, and then ask her accompany him on a suicide run he’s likely more than confident that she’ll survive when he decides to sacrifice himself so that she can complete the mission to destroy the Breach. The relationship between Stacker and Mako as individuals that built a family with the people they work and fight with in the PPDC, is the heart of the film. It's a mirror of the relationship between Hellboy and his father, Trevor Bruttenholm in the Hellboy series, or Blade and Whistler in Blade II. Movies that del Toro directed (and probably co-wrote) that placed importance on family. The impact of Stacker's influence in Mako's life is that much greater when he dies, because, now, with the exception of Raleigh, her new partner, Mako has lost most of her family by the end of the film (but not in vain because she avenges them twice over). Sufficed to say, the theme of family and unity is strongest when focused solely on Mako and Stacker’s relationship. It literally defines them as characters and it’s what makes their narrative journey in the story one that resonates long after the movie has ended. It’s exactly what makes the narrative decisions made by Pacific Rim: Uprising such a bother as well. How Uprising uses Undermines Stacker to Bolster Jake One of the biggest problems with Uprising right out the gate is that it disrespects the entire relationship between Mako and Stacker Pentecost, and the character of Stacker Pentecost. And it does that with the sequel-exclusive character, Jake Pentecost, portrayed by John Boyega. The one character I was excited to see is now my greatest frustration and disappointment. The thesis is this: Stacker Pentecost having a son makes no sense in relation to his character arc in the original film. It destroys the core of the character that was quite literally built on the value he had for family, and turns him into the very anti-thesis of what he was. When they originally announced that Boyega would be playing “The Son of Stacker Pentecost”, I was weary. For lack of a better word, the entire idea itself clashed with established canon, and the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me. Yet, I hoped they would try to find some way of introducing the character without sabotaging the relationship of Mako/Stacker and Stacker himself. Then I read the tiny little passage in del Toro’s early draft biography for Mako Mori (one that was likely tweaked after and not before Boyega was cast, because everything otherwise from external media or the the film never mentions children in Stacker’s life, only his parents and his sister): A lot of people assumed this is who “Duke Pentecost” was and began to theorize. All it did was make me extremely uneasy. As a early draft of Mako's biography, I believed they wouldn't go with this angle. I continued to hope they wouldn’t mess up Pentecost’s backstory by jamming in, in del Toro’s words, “an Illegitimate War Child” into a storyline that did not compensate for one, let alone allow it, given that the structure of his and Mako’s relationship in the film and external media made it clear that they were all the family each other had. Then, October 5, 2016, Entertainment Weekly released a pre-New York Comic-Con 2017 interview with John Boyega, and he had this to say about the Jake/Stacker relationship: Additionally, during the New York Comic-Con, when the panel interviewer asked if Boyega’s Jake was striving to live up to his father’s legacy, Boyega responded with an exaggerated, “Hell no!” and that was particularly frustrating to hear. For lack of a better word, Steven S. DeKnight and his team of screenwriters decided that the best way for Pacific Rim: Uprising to establish a relationship between Stacker Pentecost and his newly created son for the sequel, is to not give them one at all. And their idea behind resolving the fact that Jake was never mentioned and did not exist in prior Pacific Rim media, was turn a perfectly healthy parent/child relationship between Mako and Stacker, the entire theme of the first movie, into a toxic one that was built and created entirely on the favoritism of one child and devalue of another. Stacker Pentecost goes from a man who lost everyone that was important to him and rediscovering family and unity with Mako Mori (who in turns rediscovers the same with him and Tamsin Sevier), to a man who neglected one child and completely doted on the other, in a fashion that only borderline abusive or emotionally stunted parents do. Pacific Rim: Uprising isn’t even out yet, but, already it's promotional material and interviews have managed to undermine the underlying theme of Pacific Rim as presented through Stacker Pentecost, and his relationship with Mako, by making him, what is effectively known in the Black community as “the deadbeat” or “emotionally absent” dad. That is messed up. So far as parenting characters go, Pacific Rim managed to avoid this particularly negative kerfuffle (given the unfortunate implication it has for Black characters) and doesn't make it the backbone of its or Stacker's narrative, but Uprising relies completely on the “Black Character with a Criminal Background” and “Black Character with Neglectful or Abusive Parents” stereotype to fault and makes it the defining characteristic of not only Stacker Pentecost, but Jake Pentecost as well. It’s frustrating to find it here and so front in center as a way to bolster up the sequel’s main character at the expense of the original film's Black lead. And, you know, let’s be real: Jake, never had to be “The Son of Stacker Pentecost” for people to care about him. He’s being portrayed by John Boyega (aka “Finn from Star Wars”, and “Moses from Attack the Block”). That would’ve been enough for people to get invested in his character, like “Stringer Bell Fighting Giant Monsters” and del Toro's name was enough to get people’s butts into the theater. Jake could’ve been an original character with no ties to Stacker or Mako, doing everything he's doing in this sequel and people wouldn’t have cared. Part of me wants to blame John Boyega for this, especially after he declared that he had some creative input in the narrative process for for the film. Conclusion What Pacific Rim: Uprising has done with Stacker Pentecost is an element of narrative Character Derailment. They try to gloss up their storyline up by saying “Jake is the son of Stacker Pentecost’s first love”. But, that makes it an even more grievous demonstration in undermining Stacker's character. Stacker falls in love with his first love, gets her pregnant, she has his child, and then, in a startling show disrespect for their relationship and their son, decided to neglect that child in favor of a girl he adopted from Tokyo? Stacker Pentecost is my favorite character. He is one of the better characters from the original film. And Uprising’s narrative choices for the character don't mesh with what was originally presented and for lack of a better word, I'm not exactly thrilled by their choices. The screenwriter’s really thought to promote one Black character, they had to cut another one down with a needlessly convoluted backstory. And of all the Black characters to undercut in a movie only starring one major Black character, it had be the heart of Pacific Rim: Stacker Pentecost. 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